The great thing about the dead, they make space.

Men emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

Appealingness is inversely proportional to attainability.

To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.

Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.

Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?